Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday April 23, 2014 @11:36PM
from the greased-lightning dept.

Zothecula (1870348) writes "Hitachi has announced that it's installing the world's fastest ultra-high-speed elevators in the Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre skyscraper in Guangzhou, China. Making up two out of a total of 95 elevators in the building, Hitachi says the new lifts use a range of technologies to produce record-breaking speeds of 1,200 m/min while still meeting the necessary standards of safety and comfort."

The problem with building really tall buildings is how to transport enough people up and down without using up the floor space on elevators rather than rentable area. Silly fast elevators may well be worth the money if it results in more silly expensive top-floor rent income.

Since terminal velocity is a function of air resistance, but the air in the elevator is always moving as fast as the occupant, there's actually no upper limit on the speed of the elevator. It would have to accelerate the entire way.